You know, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if they skipped over it.
Yes
No
You know, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if they skipped over it.
It might come to that.
It will be difficult to essentially tell the principal actors "Hey, you guys need to chillax for about a year while we film this prequel series". That would be a contractual nightmare.
Perhaps if they underscored the most important aspects of W&G using flashbacks? Or if they filmed both storyline simultaneously? Either way it will be tricky.
Yeah, I also thought that flashbacks could be an option. Or, imagine this: In a perfect scenario, the films are all released, they're done amazingly well, the masses accept them and love them, and then years later, the studio releases Wizard and Glass. At that point, it's exciting because Oh my God, we get more Dark Tower back story!
No.. they simply make that one of the TV series they spoke of. They could use different actors for the most part and only need the main actors here and there... it would work and I think it would be glorious. Same thing could be done with Wind should everything be going well for them.
HELP ME FIND
Insomnia #459
ANY S/L #459
Speaking of casting-
Who does everyone want to play Roland? Eddie? Sus? Jake?
Oy?
As long as they don't give Susannah legs I am fine with whoever they cast.
I want a bunch of barely-known or completely no-name actors who I don't already associate with being other characters. That's who I want.
None of this Viggo Mortenson, Daniel Craig stuff I've heard people mention. They've got their big roles. I'd love to see somebody come into being Roland and be so fucking good at it, that I'm like "Thank God they found that guy! He's perfect!"
Of course, I know it's unrealistic.
Partially unrealistic... after all, Daniel Redcliffe and Elijah Wood weren't exactly box office draws when they were cast as Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins, respectively. Of course, those two franchises had much, much more international appeal so they could have cast anyone really. It will be interesting that's for sure.
And I just want to go on record saying that I am completely OK with Susannah with legs.
It was a core fundamental to her character. It directly tied to the pusher story in the drawing of the three and also was the key moment when detta really started to come out. I am sure they could work all of those things in some other way but to me it would lose so much to do that.
Yeah, I can see how it may make more sense to cast popular actors in order to draw in the crowds, since it's not as well-known as Harry Potter / Lord of the Rings.
I'll be honest, I'm not sure yet how I feel about that. I'm still digesting it.And I just want to go on record saying that I am completely OK with Susannah with legs.
I guess I should amend my public opinion by saying that I believe I would be OK with her having legs as long as the wheelchair was in play and she couldn't use the legs. The early artist drawings for the film had her not only with legs but standing and obviously not being disabled. I have no idea what led them to that decision.
I don't know that anyone HAS discussed removing the wheelchair aspect of her character. The scripts that have been considered so far haven't even gotten as far as mentioning Susannah.
Author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences and The Dark Tower Companion. Co-editor with Stephen King of the anthology Flight or Fright.
Like I said, I was basing that on the released Gregory Hill concept art that was done when Ron Howard was moving things forward.
28 in 23 (?)!!!!
63 in '23!!!!!!!!!!
My Collection: https://www.thedarktower.org/palaver...ion-Merlin1958
The Houston Astros cheated Major League Baseball from 2017-18!!!! Is that how we teach our kids to play the game now?????
They could buy Dickie Bennett's from the Justified auction!
Author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences and The Dark Tower Companion. Co-editor with Stephen King of the anthology Flight or Fright.
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment...ovies-history/
Stephen King's novels have occasionally made a successful transition to the big screen, but none has experienced as bumpy an adaptation ride as The Dark Tower series. King's sprawling fantasy-horror-action-Western opus spans seven books written between 1982 and 2004. But that's not all—there's also an eighth book (The Wind Through the Keyhole) that was written in 2012 after the official series was finished, as well as numerous Marvel comics installments that either give graphic-novel treatment to tales told in the books, or present prequel/spin-off stories to accompany the proper narrative. To say it's a huge franchise would be an understatement. And as of this month it's finally set to make it to the multiplex.
Stop me if you've heard this before. The recent announcement that The Dark Tower is going to be made by Sony and Media Rights Capital in a multimedia venture involving an intertwined film trilogy and TV series is a rehash of 2012's news that Warner Bros. was aiming to do likewise. At that time, Warner had partnered with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, with Howard looking to direct at least the first cinematic installment and HBO carrying the series. That 2012 deal came about because Universal had previously pulled the plug on an identical Howard partnership in 2011. And those plans were preceded by King selling the rights to the books in 2007 to J.J. Abrams for a mere $19. Abrams' work on Lost had convinced the author that he was the right man for the job. So the fact that Sony aims to resurrect Grazer and Howard's adaptation—at least in template, albeit with a newly revised script from Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) and original screenwriter Jeff Pinkner—can't help but be met with a healthy dose of "I'll believe it when I see it" skepticism.
To understand why it's been so hard to get a filmed variation off the ground, it's necessary to look at what The Dark Tower is, and what a live-action version would require. At least initially inspired by Robert Browning's 1855 poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," King's story begins quite simply with 1982's The Gunslinger, which recounts the efforts of a solitary man named Roland Deschain to cross a desert in pursuit of a mysterious Man in Black. Roland lives in Mid-World, which is situated in a universe that runs on something of a parallel track to our own (sharing some things, and featuring slightly warped versions of others), except in Mid-World, traces of ancient magic still exist, albeit in fleeting amounts. Perhaps because of that dissipation, or because of other forces entirely, Mid-World and its once formidable advanced-technology foundations are crumbling. Roland's desire to catch up to the Man in Black is related to his larger quest to reach the mythic Dark Tower, which is rumored to be the nexus of all universes, and where Roland hopes he can save his world from ruin.
Roland is the last "gunslinger," part of a legendary group of knight-like warriors, and just as he resembles (in look, as well as stoic-badass attitude) Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, so too does The Gunslinger resemble something of a fantastical variation on a spaghetti Western, complete with a centerpiece one-against-many massacre. It also features Roland's first encounter with young Jake Chambers, a boy from our own world who strangely winds up in Mid-World, and whose fate at the end of The Gunslinger winds up coloring the rest of the saga. And what a saga it is. Crisscrossing between Mid-World and earth, during which time Roland acquires a motley posse known as a ka-tet (ka being the Mid-World term for "fate") that aids him on his journey, The Dark Tower proves to be an epic of immense scope, tremendous action, and ultimately heartrending tragedy.
Boasting its own specialized language and an immense roster of characters led by Roland's sidekicks Jake, Susannah Dean (a wheelchair-bound African-American woman from the 1960s with a split personality), Eddie Dean (a junkie from the 1980s with a knack for sharpshooting), and their pet Oy, the novels deliver a barrage of show-stopping set pieces involving (to name only a few) a sentient train, a cyborg bear, and none other than Stephen King himself. To put it bluntly: The Dark Tower is gargantuan. And gargantuan in a way that isn't easily condensable. While each novel might, on its own terms, lend itself to minor abbreviations—an encounter cut here, a diversion shortened there—there's no way to fundamentally get rid of, or even effectively skim over, any of the seven official novels. A possible exception to that rule might be Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, which functions as one long flashback to Roland's youthful familial and romantic dramas. Yet even ditching Wizard and Glass would entail casting off so much of Roland's backstory that his motivations, and the basic nature of his character, would seriously suffer in the process.
If, from a narrative point of view, The Dark Tower is hard to reduce in size, then a further obstacle to any filmic/television adaptation is the likely cost of the project. Roland and company's odyssey takes him on foot through one extraordinary rural and urban setting after another, including Manhattan, along the way facing creatures and foes of a far-from-normal sort. Consequently, pulling it off would necessitate both substantial on-location shooting and considerable special-effects artistry. It's an endeavor on par with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, except it would run as long as both of those series combined, and would lead to potentially more logistical hurdles, be it clearance issues for its bounty of allusions to modern American pop culture and King's other novels (many of which share some relationship to Mid-World and its villain, The Crimson King), or its sizable diversity of settings.
Is it doable? With Jackson's films reconfirming moviegoers' hunger for intricately conceived swords-and-sorcery franchises, with Game of Thrones proving that television can handle long-format fantasy epics based on prior source material, and with A-listers like Javier Bardem and Russell Crowe having shown interest in playing Roland, it certainly seems that now is the ideal time for the live-action rebirth of The Dark Tower. Though whether, like Roland, it reaches its final destination is a question only time (and ka) can ultimately answer.
Author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences and The Dark Tower Companion. Co-editor with Stephen King of the anthology Flight or Fright.
A great start.Arcel, when he was getting going in Denmark, taught himself to speak and read English in order to consume Stephen King’s books in the writer’s native tongue. Arcel is a huge fan of The Dark Tower and knows the series well.
TGWTDT was excellent (even though Fincher's version is superior), and I've heard good things about A Royal Affair.
Hope this picks up steam.
If it happens, he'll be the third Danish director to tackle a King adaptation. Yay!
Thought this might be germaine to the discussion.....
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/71731
28 in 23 (?)!!!!
63 in '23!!!!!!!!!!
My Collection: https://www.thedarktower.org/palaver...ion-Merlin1958
The Houston Astros cheated Major League Baseball from 2017-18!!!! Is that how we teach our kids to play the game now?????
Been saying this for a long time now, this is the route they have to take!
They also told me my long-standing advice on how to crack the adaptation was actually put into the script: Roland did start out with the Horn of Eld. Readers will know what that means and why it's crucial to any adaptation of the material.